By Mary Tucker | Senior Communications and Content Manager | IAEE
Exhibitor marketing budgets have shifted significantly since the pandemic, but are your allocations keeping pace with where the industry is actually headed? What channels are getting the biggest investment right now, and which metrics are exhibitors using to prove their spend is working?
To dig into these questions, we sat down with two experts who bring a unique combination of hard data and on-the-ground perspective: the Center for Exhibition Industry Research’s (CEIR) Nancy Drapeau, IPC and EXHIBITOR magazine’s Emily Olson. In their webinar, CEIR Session – Where Exhibitor Marketing Budgets Really Go: Industry Benchmarks and Ways to Make Them Work Better, Nancy unpacks the latest CEIR research on budget allocation, exhibiting priorities and performance benchmarks, while Emily brings that data to life with real-world examples and practical takeaways from the field.
As CEIR’s Vice President of Research, Nancy dives deep into what actually works in exhibition marketing and how industry leaders can go about proving it. Her industry-wide studies track how exhibitors invest their budgets, what strategies drive results and where the industry is headed next. This research has become a go-to resource for exhibitors, organizers and marketers, alike.
Emily brings a journalist’s eye to the exhibitions industry. With more than 20 years of experience covering business, arts, culture and live events, she leads editorial strategy, research initiatives and international awards programs as editor of EXHIBITOR magazine. Her reporting doesn’t just track industry trends; it interprets what they mean for the industry leaders who want to capitalize on them.
Here, Nancy and Emily share how exhibitor spending patterns are evolving, where budgets are concentrated, and practical guidance for optimizing exhibit investments and maximizing ROI in today’s market.
NANCY: What is the most surprising shift you’ve seen in how exhibitors allocate their marketing budgets compared to before the pandemic?
The most surprising shift is the lack of a shift. The share of marketing budgets allocated to B2B exhibitions has remained remarkably stable. Given the rapid acceleration of digital marketing during the pandemic, I expected exhibitions to lose ground. Instead, they have maintained their position as the largest marketing investment for most exhibitors.
That consistency speaks to the unique value exhibitors continue to place on face-to-face engagement for building relationships, generating leads and driving sales outcomes.
At the same time, we do see modest increases in spending across multiple digital channels. So while exhibitions have retained their primacy, digital marketing activity has continued to expand alongside them. Rather than replacing exhibitions, digital channels appear to be complementing them by supporting pre-event promotion, audience engagement, lead nurturing and post-event follow-up.
Taken together, the data suggest that exhibitors increasingly view exhibitions and digital marketing as interconnected components of a broader, integrated marketing strategy.
EMILY: When you compare CEIR’s data to what exhibitors are actually doing on the exhibition floor, where do you notice the biggest gaps between strategy and execution?
Exhibitors are clearly investing in digital marketing, but that investment is often disconnected from the in-person experience. So often, digital channels are used simply to announce that a company will be at a show rather than to give attendees a reason to engage.
Digital tools should extend the life of the face-to-face interaction by sharing actionable insights before the show or personalizing outreach. Exhibitors can also take what they learn at one event and use digital tools to make their outreach at the next event more relevant. For example, “Thank you for attending our demo last month. Next month our subject-matter expert will be sharing best practices about integrating the tool into your workflow.”
Exhibit teams are often stretched thin, so this kind of integration can feel daunting. But even one focused improvement can make the entire investment work harder.
NANCY: Of the performance metrics exhibitors are using today, which ones do you think are most underutilized and/or misunderstood?
I’m not sure any particular metrics are underutilized or misunderstood. More often, the challenge is that exhibitors don’t define success clearly enough at the outset or don’t analyze performance deeply enough once the event is over.
A good example is lead quality. Organizations have debated for years what constitutes a qualified lead, but the more important question is: Who defines it? Marketing? Sales? Or both? The most effective approach is for marketing and sales to work together to establish a shared definition of a qualified lead and its purpose. That alignment creates buy-in from sales and increases the likelihood that leads will be acted upon after the event. When marketing defines lead quality independently, it can result in leads that sales doesn’t value or pursue, making it difficult to achieve desired outcomes.
Exhibiting is a significant investment, and maximizing returns starts long before the event itself. Success metrics should be established in advance and tied directly to business objectives. If lead generation is a priority, then a qualified lead definition should inform every decision, from selecting which events to exhibit at to planning pre-event outreach, onsite engagement and post-show follow-up.
Those same metrics should also be used to evaluate outcomes afterward. Did the event deliver the desired number of qualified leads? If not, why? Was it the wrong event audience, insufficient investment in engagement activities, or ineffective follow-up? The goal is not simply to measure results, but to understand what drove them.
At the end of the day, the most successful exhibitors take a holistic approach. They define success upfront, align stakeholders around performance metrics, and use those metrics throughout the planning, execution and evaluation process to continuously improve results.
EMILY: What do you suggest for successfully adapting an exhibit strategy to reach multiple generations of attendees?
At any one time there could be four generations on a trade show floor, all in different stages of their career, all with different needs, all with different ways of evaluating a product and all with different ways of communicating. However, age alone doesn’t determine how someone wants to engage. Career stage, buying authority and technical knowledge are also important.
Because an attendee audience is so varied, the most effective approach is to create multiple paths into the experience. One attendee may want a quick, self-directed way to understand the product. Another may want a detailed conversation that builds trust. Someone else may respond best to a demo or to digital content they can digest later. Rather than building one message for everyone, give your audience choices in how they learn and interact. Doing so allows you to effectively communicate with people across generations, job functions and levels of buying authority.
NANCY: Are there any red flags in the current data that suggest exhibitors might be misallocating their spend?
I would say no. Rather than indicating misallocation, the data suggest that exhibitors are becoming more selective and strategic in how they invest their exhibiting budgets.
Over the past several years, persistent inflation has increased costs across the board, affecting exhibitors, attendees, organizers, suppliers and travel expenses. As a result, exhibiting has become more expensive, forcing organizations to make more deliberate decisions about where and how they invest.
What’s notable is that, despite these economic pressures, most exhibitors continue to view exhibitions as an important marketing and sales channel and are maintaining their investment. At the same time, they appear to be making choices to maximize the return on finite resources. Viewed in that context, the data points less to misallocation and more to optimization. Exhibitors are adapting their investment strategies to balance rising costs with the need to drive business outcomes, making more targeted decisions about where their exhibiting dollars can have the greatest impact.
EMILY: What is one piece of practical advice you would give exhibitors trying to integrate digital channels into their in-person event strategy?
The most important thing to remember is that it’s not about you. Don’t use your digital channels to tell people how excited you are about a show. Instead, each communication should provide something useful and answer the attendee’s question: “Why should I care?”
Consider sharing a useful benchmark, offering a planning tool or inviting attendees to a relevant demo. The goal is not to add to the digital cacophony by creating more content. It is to establish a relationship that makes the in-person engagement more useful.
